It was called "Liubo" in the pre-Qin period, "Yezixi" in the Tang Dynasty and changed to "Mahang School" in the Song Dynasty. It was called "Mahjong" in the late Qing Dynasty.
From the pre-Qin dynasty to the Tang dynasty, these games were exclusive to the royal family and princes. Swallows under the eaves of Wang Dao and Xie An have now flown into the homes of ordinary people. In the evolution of history, mahjong has gradually become a popular entertainment for ordinary people. It is said that bridge and poker are also derived from mahjong. Poker was separated from mahjong by Wu Zixi in the Tang Dynasty, and then spread to the west through Kelpolo, becoming a bridge to the west.
Liang Qichao once joked: "Only when you study will you forget to play mahjong, and only when you play mahjong will you forget to study."
Although it is a joke, it can be juxtaposed with reading, which shows that it is deeply rooted in people's hearts.
Mahjong is deeply rooted in people's hearts because it is simple to operate and easy to use. It is quite suitable for family leisure activities or mass entertainment, not to mention the extremely deep and stable cultural soil it relies on.
This game, which originated in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, has been carried forward in Sichuan.
Sichuan has always been a leisure capital, and slow life is the norm here. Playing mahjong brings more fun, can kill spare time, can bring joy to the game, and can win a little money if you are lucky. So playing mahjong has become a pastime to meet the needs of the public. Especially on holidays, weddings, funerals, friends' parties and playing mahjong are almost necessary entertainment activities for every family in Sichuan. Like mahjong, it has already been integrated into the blood of Sichuanese.
My family is no exception.
Dad is a mahjong fan. As long as I can remember, he has spent a lot of time on mahjong. In order to play mahjong, there are often wars at home, but he sticks to his position and does not change his original intention. Therefore, after school in my childhood and adolescence, I was often accompanied by the shouts of touch and Hu, one called uncle and the other called uncle. Many elders always look at me with deep sympathy. Look at this kid. He has a bright future. It is not easy to play mahjong at home without dropping out of school.
After entering the old age, my father kept innovating, transforming this experiential entertainment from entity to network, and the theme of the game remained unchanged, or playing mahjong. Now, I understand that this is my father's true love!
People like my dad are not rare in our local area. However, when dad plays mahjong, he cares about the improvement of his own skills and the worship of others, and he doesn't care whether the result is profit or loss. However, just for entertainment, people like him are only a few, and more people still gamble through mahjong as a carrier.
Mahjong has also kept pace with the times in recent years, from the Great Wall on all sides to three sides, and finally from thirteen to seven. Various ways of playing emerge one after another. The so-called windy and rainy, a rising tide lifts all boats, planning, bloody battles to the end, checking pigs, etc. The gameplay is simple and fast, and the gambling money is rising.
As a result, the mahjong room became a casino. Some lawless elements tried their best to manipulate mahjong machine by installing the so-called remote control program, thus cheating and profiteering. There are not a few people who borrow usury after losing money to separate their wives and children. It is said that Sichuan has the highest divorce rate, which is inextricably linked with playing mahjong.
If mahjong is regarded as gambling instead of entertainment, as long as you play it for a long time, you will definitely lose your money in the end.
Because the mathematical experience of probability, sequence and limit is concentrated here. Gamblers will never understand that gambling is neither luck nor opponents. They are fighting against masters like Dirichlet, Bernoulli, Gauss, Nash and Kelly in mathematics. How big can they win?
In Sichuan, every mahjong hall will charge for tea and seats, not much, around 200 yuan. Some are charged at 2% of the total amount of gambling funds, and this fee is generally paid by the winner. Everyone will think, no problem, you should!
However, what you never dreamed was that it was this small 2% that finally made the owner of the mahjong hall the final winner.
The winning probability of these two small points seems insignificant, but with the law of large numbers, it has become a weapon for casinos to make money!
"The Law of Large Numbers" was put forward by mathematician Bernoulli, saying that it is assumed that n(a) is the number of times that A appears in n independent repeated experiments, and p is the probability that A appears in each experiment. When n is large enough, for any positive number ε, there is lim {| (n (a)/n) | p] < ε}= 1, and the formula is so complicated that 99% gamblers can't understand it. It doesn't matter if they don't understand. We only look at the results, and the money won by the store = 0.02 * a.
As long as the players keep playing, the mahjong boss will keep making money! Regardless of whether the player wins or loses, the boss only needs to collect tea and room charges. This is also the reason why there are so many mahjong halls in Sichuan.
So don't think how smart you are, you should be glad that you haven't played long enough, which is why you will lose in nine cases out of ten.
Let's go further, even if the probability of both sides is equal, you are still a loser, which involves "infinite wealth" and "gambler's law of losing everything" This theorem has many applications in real life, such as "surname extinction" and "mitochondrial Eve hypothesis". In the case of equal probability, whoever has the largest capital will have a high winning rate.
In mahjong, everyone has 5 yuan money until they lose it all. Then you have a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. If you have five dollars and I have 10 dollars, until you lose them all, then the probability of your winning is only 33.3% and the probability of losing is 66.7%. Of course, it is not excluded that some players can pull the winning rate back to more than 50% through a series of complicated calculations and superb technology, but don't forget that there is still Kelly formula hidden behind the casino boss.
Baidu can know at a glance that in probability theory, Kelly formula is a betting strategy to maximize the long-term growth rate of principal in an independent repeated game with positive expected net income.
Kelly formula tells us that the risk of "income loss" caused by too little betting is far less than the risk of losing money caused by too much betting.
There is only one final conclusion: never gamble unless you win 100%.
And the only rule to win 100%: don't gamble.
Fortunately, gambling has been banned by the state. Playing mahjong, as an indispensable part of Sichuan people's life, has gradually returned to the essence of entertainment. Finding fun in a comfortable and quiet life has become the mainstream.
But in the north, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places, I rarely see mahjong halls, and pedestrians on the street are in a hurry and busy. Run for life and keep running for a better life.